 |
|
|
|||||
Twitter/X has a unique problem. After the departure of users following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media site (and again following his short stint with the Trump administration), the site has a surplus of unused user names. Now it’s looking to capitalize on that. The company has opened a waitlist for what it’s calling the “handle marketplace,” where it will sell abandoned and inactive usernames. But theres a slight catch: To make a bid for one, you’ll likely need to be a Premium+ or Premium Business subscriber to the site. Some handles will be effectively free, included in the cost of the subscription. But for “rare” handles, X is warning users the price tag could be steep. “Rare handles,” the company wrote in an FAQ about the marketplace, “may be priced anywhere from $2,500 to over seven figures, depending on demand and uniqueness.” It’s unclear if usernames X took away from active users (including @music and @sports) will be included in the sale. Two types of “‘inactive’ handles will be made available,” the company said. “Priority” usernames will include “full names, multi-word phrases, or alphanumeric combinations.” Handles that have “short, generic, or culturally significant names will be deemed rare. If youre considering signing up for a Premium+ or Premium Business subscription just to grab the name you want, then cancellingmuch like streaming subscribers do when hot series roll outyoure likely to be disappointed. If the username you choose is classified as “Priority,” you’ll only be allowed to keep it as long as youre a subscriber. Once you cancel or downgrade, you’ll revert to your current username. A Premium+ subscription on X.com costs $40 per month or $395 per year. Business subscriptions run from $2,000 per year (or $200 per month) to $10,000 (or $1,000 per month). X has been looking for ways to boost revenues since Musk took over in 2022. While the company as a whole has not reported any financials, its U.K. division made a financial filing in April showing a 66.3% drop in revenue in the year following Musks takeover. Research firm EMarketer, however, projects that X’s U.S. digital ad revenue will jump 17.5% to $1.3 billion this year from $1.1 billion in 2024. The distribution of “Rare” handles will be handled differently. The company says there will be “public drops” for some, which will be given away for free “based on merit,” with multiple users allowed to apply. The handle will be awarded based on the user’s engagement and “past contributions.” Users will not, seemingly, have to be a Premium+ or Premium Business subscriber to take part in these disbursements. Other rare handles, though, will be sold at “fixed” prices via invitation and will require a subscription. The price, X says, will be “determined by a number of factors, including popularity of word, character length, and cultural significance.” Once purchased, buyers of these handles will keep them even if they cancel their subscription. Examples of Direct purchase usernames included @one, @fly, and @compute.X said it’s hoping the handle marketplace will extend beyond the X world. “We are establishing a new standard for social media handlesa framework we hope the broader industry will adopt, similar to how Community Notes has influenced online transparency,” it wrote. X’s sale of inactive usernames has been rumored for months. In April, a user spotted the framework for the “handle inquiry” process. Reselling usernames was something Musk began discussing as early as January of 2023, however, as part of his campaign of purging the site of inactive accounts. X might stand alone right now in terms of reselling usernames, but it’s not the only company that’s thinning out inactive users. Google, in 2023, announced plans to do away with inactive Google accounts, deleting Gmail, Google Chat, Google Drive and other services that hadnt been accessed for a long period of time (generally two years), saying those were more likely to be compromised by hackers.
Category:
E-Commerce
On a scorching hot Saturday in San Antonio, dozens of teachers traded a day off for a glimpse of the future. The topic of the day’s workshop: enhancing instruction with artificial intelligence.After marveling as AI graded classwork instantly and turned lesson plans into podcasts or online storybooks, one high school English teacher raised a concern that was on the minds of many: “Are we going to be replaced with AI?”That remains to be seen. But for the nation’s 4 million teachers to stay relevant and help students use the technology wisely, teachers unions have forged an unlikely partnership with the world’s largest technology companies. The two groups don’t always see eye to eye but say they share a common goal: training the future workforce of America.Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are providing millions of dollars for AI training to the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers union. In exchange, the tech companies have an opportunity to make inroads into schools and win over students in the race for AI dominance.AFT President Randi Weingarten said skepticism guided her negotiations, but the tech industry has something schools lack: deep pockets.“There is no one else who is helping us with this. That’s why we felt we needed to work with the largest corporations in the world,” Weingarten said. “We went to them they didn’t come to us.”Weingarten first met with Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith in 2023 to discuss a partnership. She later reached out to OpenAI to pursue an “agnostic” approach that means any company’s AI tools could be used in a training session.Under the arrangement announced in July, Microsoft is contributing $12.5 million to AFT over five years. OpenAI is providing $8 million in funding and $2 million in technical resources, and Anthropic has offered $500,000. Tech money will build an AI training hub for teachers With the money, AFT is planning to build an AI training hub in New York City that will offer virtual and in-person workshops for teachers. The goal is to open at least two more hubs and train 400,000 teachers over the next five years.The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, announced its own partnership with Microsoft last month. The company has provided a $325,000 grant to help the NEA develop AI trainings in the form of “microcredentials” online trainings open to the union’s 3 million members, said Daaiyah Bilal, NEA’s senior director of education policy. The goal is to train at least 10,000 members this school year.“We tailored our partnership very surgically,” Bilal said. “We are very mindful of what a technology company stands to gain by spreading information about the products they develop.”Both unions set similar terms: Educators, not the private funders, would design and lead trainings that include AI tools from multiple companies. The unions own the intellectual property for the trainings, which cover safety and privacy concerns alongside AI skills.The Trump administration has encouraged the private investment, recently creating an AI Education Task Force as part of an effort to achieve “global dominance in artificial intelligence.” The federal government urged tech companies and other organizations to foot the bill. So far, more than 100 companies have signed up.Tech companies see opportunities in education beyond training teachers. Microsoft unveiled a $4 billion initiative for AI training, research and the gifting of its AI tools to teachers and students. It includes the AFT grant and a program that will give all school districts and community colleges in Washington, Microsoft’s home state, free access to Microsoft CoPilot tools. Google says it will commit $1 billion for AI education and job training programs, including free access to its Gemini for Education platform for U.S. high schools.Several recent studies have found that AI use in schools is rapidly increasing but training and guidance are lagging.The industry offers resources that can help scale AI literacy efforts quickly. But educators should ensure any partnership focuses on what’s best for teachers and students, said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education.“These are private initiatives, and they are run by companies that have a stake,” Lake said.Microsoft’s Brad Smith agrees that teachers should have a “healthy dose of skepticism” about the role of tech companies.“While it’s easy to see the benefits right now, we should always be mindful of the potential for unintended consequences,” Smith said in an interview, pointing to concerns such as AI’s possible impact on critical thinking. “We have to be careful. It’s early days.” Teachers see new possibilities At the San Antonio AFT training, about 50 educators turned up for the three-hour workshop for teachers in the Northside Independent School District. It is the city’s largest, employing about 7,000 teachers.The day started with a pep talk.“We all know, when we talk about AI, teachers say, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that,'” trainer Kathleen Torregrossa told the room. “But we are preparing kids for the future. That is our primary job. And AI, like it or not, is part of our world.”Attendees generated lesson plans using ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft CoPilot and two AI tools designed for schools, Khanmingo and Colorín Colorado.Gabriela Aguirre, a 1st grade dual language teacher, repeatedly used the word “amazing” to describe what she saw.“It can save you so much time,” she said, and add visual flair to lessons. She walked away with a plan to use AI tools to make illustrated flashcards in English and Spanish to teach vocabulary.“With all the video games, the cellphones you have to compete against, the kids are always saying, ‘I’m bored.’ Everything is boring,” Aguirre said. “If you can find ways to engage them with new technology, you’ve just got to do that.”Middle school teacher Celeste Simone said there is no turning back to how she taught before.As a teacher for English language learners, Simone can now ask AI tools to generate pictures alongside vocabulary words and create illustrated storybooks that use students’ names as characters. She can take a difficult reading passage and ask a chatbot to translate it into Spanish, Pashto or other languages. And she can ask AI to rewrite difficult passages at any grade level to match her students’ reading levels. All in a matter of seconds.“I can give my students access to things that never existed before,” Simone said. “As a teacher, once you’ve used it and see how helpful it is, I don’t think I could go back to the way I did things before.” The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. _This story was first published on Oct 17, 2025. It was re-published on Oct. 20, 2025, to show Brad Smith is the president and vice chairman of Microsoft, not the CEO. Jocelyn Gecker, AP Education Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Can a UX change bring traffic back to X? The social network previously known as Twitter is hoping an update to its in-app browser will boost links on the timeline and lure back publishers and creators who’ve grown ambivalent to a site that doesn’t drive clicks like it used to. X head of product Nikita Bier wrote in a post Sunday that a new link experience that will first be tested out on iOS is intended to “make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.” Currently, users who click links on X are taken to an in-app browser that takes up the full screen. Under the update, which Bier shared in a demo video, clicking on a link instead collapses the post’s engagement bar to the bottom of the screen, letting users comment, repost, like, or save from inside the story as they scroll and read. We're testing a new link experience, starting on iOS — to make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and pic.twitter.com/oWraLpPwji— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) October 19, 2025 From the looks of it, it’s a more seamless experience that better integrates links into the larger X experience rather than the friction that comes from opening a link in a slow-loading browser. The change could encourage more engagement for posts with links, which in turn would surface more links on the timeline. “For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach,” Bier wrote. “This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply. So X doesn’t get a clear signal whether the content is any good.” The announcement comes amid wider changes at X. Owner Elon Musk also announced Sunday that the site’s recommendations are “evolving very rapidly” and within four to six weeks, xAIs Grok system “will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day) to match users with content theyre most likely to find interesting.” While links may be buried in X’s timeline today, the right algorithm tweaks and UX changes could better surface posts with links and make the site more friendly for creators and publishers. Bier denied that links are de-boosted on X’s timeline now, but said they do “have lower engagement and we are trying to fix that.” “If youre a writer or journalist who left X in the last couple years, coming back could be the biggest arbitrage opportunity of your career,” he wrote. Once the online water cooler of digital media, X now drives less referral traffic for publishers than it previously did, while X’s own usage data released earlier this year suggests a decline in time spent on the app. Outlets like PBS, NPR, and The Guardian have stopped posting there altogether, as news influencers and journalists have turned to alternatives like Bluesky, Substack, LinkedIn, and Threads to build their online audiences. As social media companies adapt to a changing landscape, UX and UI changes can help nudge users towards new behaviors (see Meta’s push into vertical video or upgrades to its DMs). For X, a change to the experience of clicking links and interacting with articles on its app could help make it more welcoming to the writers and readers who powered Twitter in its heyday.
Category:
E-Commerce
Love it or hate it, iOS 26 brought the most radical software redesign to the iPhone in over a decade. The companys new design language, Liquid Glass, mimics how light in the real world warps and transforms when passing through physical glass. Many iPhone users find Liquid Glass refreshing, fun, and technically impressive. Detractors of the new design say Liquid Glasss myriad transparent toolbars and other UI elements, which let the content behind them bleed through, make iOS 26 harder to navigate than its predecessors. Regardless of where you stand, Liquid Glass isnt going away. Yet, if you fall into the latter camp and find the new design element distracting, youll be very happy with the next major update to iOS 26. Apple will soon let you tone down the design While iOS 26 shipped in September, that was just the first iteration of the software. Apple continues to develop the iPhones OS actively, and currently it is beta testing the next major update to the new operating system: iOS 26.1. Apple has been testing iOS 26.1 for weeks now, and yesterday, it released the fourth beta of the software. Hidden inside this beta was a new feature: a toggle to increase the opacity of Liquid Glass elements, giving them a less glassy and more frosted appearance. The option to make Liquid Glass appear more like frosted glass, which Apple calls tinted (versus clear), makes it much easier to see the outline of individual buttons on menu bars and other UI elements, while still letting some of the color from behind the UI elements bleed through. In short, the new option allows users to tone down the Liquid Glass look while still enjoying many of iOS 26’s redesigned benefits (9to5Mac has screenshots here of what the new “tinted Liquid Glass looks like). How to tone down Liquid Glass in iOS 26.1 Once you have iOS 26.1 on your iPhone, you can easily switch Liquid Glass from clear to tinted thanks to a new setting in the Settings app. To tone down your Liquid Glass elements: Open the Settings app in iOS 26.1. Tap Display and Brightness. Tap Liquid Glass. Tap the Tinted option. As Apple explains in a short message below the options, Choose your preferred look for Liquid Glass. Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath. Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast. It should be noted that the steps for toning down Liquid Glass may change by the time the final version of iOS 26.1 ships to the public, but as of iOS 26.1 beta 4, this is how you do it. When will iOS 26.1 be available? If you are an Apple developer or signed up to be an Apple public beta tester, you can download iOS 26.1 beta 4 right now. But if you want to wait for the official release, you wont need to wait long. Apple is likely to release iOS 26.1 to the public next week, perhaps as early as Monday, October 27. Once its released, any iPhone that can run iOS 26 will be able to tone down the transparency effects of Liquid Glass.
Category:
E-Commerce
Culture change is a big topicand a big consulting business. When I Googled culture change consulting business, three of top five (non-sponsored) responses were Bain, BCG, and McKinsey (in that order). Because changing culture is a prominent issue for executivesand often a very frustrating oneI decided to tackle it in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) called Culture Change Strategy: Three Rules for Making Change Happen. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The culture change consulting pitches It was fun to take a quick look at the culture change pitches of Bain, BCG, and McKinsey. Bains was aspirational: Culture is behavior at scale. Companies that create a winning culture are five times more likely to be top performers . . . Get it right and you not only boost total shareholder return and EBIT growth by up to 500%, and revenue by a factor of 10, but create an advantage that’s hard for competitors to copy. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his Substack at rogerlmartin.substack.com.","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogerlmartin.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493}} BCGs was interesting. It provided three success stories, the two examples for which the singular success metric was cost reduction/cost savings ($500M and $283M, respectively)clearly BCGs focus is culture change for cost cutting. (The third case was weird, celebrating a 147% rise in cost earnings per share. You would think that a $10 billion professional service firm would at least spellcheck the large-font bolded highlights on the landing page. But maybe there is a new non-GAAP measure called cost earnings per share.) In any event, its take on desired culture is: We help create a high-performance culture . . . by articulating the unique set of cultural traits that support business strategy, activating them through leader and organization-wide practices, and embedding the culture and change in organization structures, processes, and policies. McKinseys culture and change blurb actually says very little about culture. Of the four elements of Our Approach, only of the four even mentions culture: Capability-driven: We build the skills of your people and the capabilities and culture of your organization to improve organizational health and performance. Wholesale versus retail There is lots of stuff there, and I am sure there are valuable nuggets in the approaches. But there is lots of focus on structures, policies, and processes. These are all in a category that I call wholesalethings that can be done from a distance, centrally. It isnt an unusual impulse. Governments love wholesale. For example, a while ago the federal government became concerned about the economic struggles of single women with young children and came up with Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a federal assistance program that provided cash benefits to single mothers with children. That is wholesale. Giving money to local groups to provide customized help family-by-family is retail. Governments dont like retail because they have got to find lots of local groups and vet them and monitor them, etc. Ugh. That is a lot of work. Companies are similar. They want to change culture by reorganizing to push responsibility downwardto create a culture of initiative. Or change the stage-gate process for R&D projectsto create a culture of innovation. Or change compensation rulesto create a culture of accomplishment. Steering mechanisms Wholesale solutions inevitably sound cooler and connote commitment to culture change. But the secret to culture change is retail. To explain, l will dive into steering mechanisms, a term I coined (at least with respect to business organizations) in my very first Harvard Business Review article back in 1993, called Changing the Mind of the Corporation. Decades later, I wrote about it again in Chapter Six of my 2022 book A New Way to Think. Both pieces discussed the underlying systems that cause companies to operate the way they doand not some other way. It is not unlike the (literal) steering mechanism in newer model cars that wont let you switch lanes without first signaling. You may want to change lanes, but the steering mechanism says: No! My work on steering mechanisms adopted and adapted the work of Diana Smithwith whom I worked for several years in the mid-nineties. She is one of the group of most prominent students/followers of the late Chris Argyris, along with Amy Edmondson, Peter Senge, and David Cooperrider and me. I was attracted to her work because of my interest in the concept of steering mechanisms, shown below. Three elements work as system of three interacting mechanisms. At one end are the formal mechanisms. These are the structures, systems, processes designed to meet goalslike the ones talked about above. Cultural mechanisms are the mental guidebooks that drive collective interpretations/actions. That is, the cultural guidebooks tell you how to interpret the world around you and what actions are appropriate in that world. For example, if Kevin dresses down a subordinate in an abusive and demeaning way in a meeting and the interpretation, based on repeated incidences of this sort of behavior, is that because Kevin is an important star performer, he can abuse any subordinate and get away with it, the mental guidebook will become: Abusive behavior is fine if you area star. If you work for one; expect it. And if you can just get to be a star, you can do it too. In a strong culture (not a good culture, a strong culture), everybody watching such an interaction has the same interpretation. In a weak culture, the interpretations are all over the mapi.e. there is no guidebook. The key is to recognize that culture is derivative of a mediating domain, interpersonal mechanisms, which are the patterns that form as members define and solve problems together. Formal mechanisms dont directly influence cultural mechanisms. It is during interpersonal interactions that collective interpretationslike the one with Kevintake shape. The first time you see that sort of abusive behavior in your company, you might not know what to make of it, though you might well get some help from someone who will take you aside and say: Dont get in that position with Kevin or that will happen to you! In this way, the interpersonal domain is the linchpin. Formal can influence interpersonal. For example, if a company has completely separate marketing and sales organizations, it may promote tensions between the two functions and lots of testy meetings between marketing and sales people. Repetition of bad meetings will likely cause marketing people to warn new sales people to watch out for marketingthey always come up with unsaleable marketing ideas. When that becomes the common interpretation, the next meeting will go worse still, which just reinforces the interpretation, and so on. Eventually often a formal fix will be attempted to “transform culture,” for example to put marketing and sales under a single EVP of marketing and sales. But that wont change culture because the source of the problem was in the interpersonal domain and the guidebooks are still in the heads of the marketing folks and the sales folks. Implications for culture change There are two common approaches to culture change. The first is to attempt to go at it directly by declaring that culture must change to a desired new state. It doesnt work and never hasor ever will. The second is to change formal mechanismsreorganize, streamline processes, change incentives, etc. That doesnt work either. But the failures dont stop people from trying. Notice that these methods are entirely wholesalebroadcast a video; do a restructuring, etc. Wholesale isnt the answer. Culture change happens at the retail levelwhich means working at the interpersonal level. Changing the way people in the company interact with each other in the interpersonal domain is what changes culture. When it comes to culture change you need to be the change you want to see (a quote that is misattributed to Gandhi). Leaders of large companies often ask me, in response, how can I possibly make that happen in my large company? Wont it take forever? I tell them that Kremlin watching doesnt only happen in Moscow. In companies, managers throughout watch leadership behavior like hawks. As a leader, if you behave in interpersonal interactions the way you would like managers throughout the organization to act, mirroring will happen faster than you think. I have seen it in giant companies like P&G. AG Lafley wanted to make the culture more consumer-focused, so in every meeting with any member of his executive team in which they were asking for his approval on a project or initiative, he would always ask: On what consumer insights is this recommendation based? And AG would spend lots of his time doing in-home visits with consumers to better understand their needs. Managers throughout the organization naturally followed suit because of his behavior. In the strategy process, he always both gave direction on what he was looking for his direct reports to produce but also offered to help them in whatever way they would find helpful. That created a culture of collaboration in strategy. I have done it myself in a much, much smaller organization, the Rotman School of Management. The culture was far too professor centric. The tenure stream professors were the proverbial Brahmin caste. But the student experience depended on everyone to deliver, and I wanted our culture to reflect that. So, I always stopped to talk to the front desk receptionist on the way to my office and to the cleaning staff when they came to clean my office (because I was there working late when they made their evening rounds), and to the IT staff, and to the lecturers, etc. Professors watched and most of them (not all!) shifted their behavior in a positive direction. And I have helped it happen in companies in between, as with a $10 billion luxury apparel company that sold mainly through clothing retailers. The incoming CEO was terribly disappointed in the in-store execution of the brand and the inattention the organization had to it. To him, it was a culture of fire & forget and hope. I convinced him that rather than attempting to change that culture through fiat, to do a series of impromptu retailer visits during which he would problem-solve with the store personnel to come up with ways his company and the retailer could work together to create a great in-store shopper experience with his brands. And I convinced him to invite his senior team members to come not order them; invite them. Some joined him on the first trip, during which he modeled the kind of problem-solving, partnership culture that he wanted to nurture. He didnt berate the retailer personnel. He talked to them constructively about partnership. Word got around and more executives joined him on future trips until the corporate jet was packed. Retail execution improved dramatically as the culture changed from fire & forget to partner-for-success. Practitioner insights Culture change is hard. The formal, interpersonal and cultural steering mechanisms that build up over time are there to keep you going in the exact same direction. There are three rules for successful culture change. The first is to think retail not wholesale. There are no master strokes from the faraway top of the company that magically bring about culture change. The second is to focus on the interpersonal domain. It is the mediating domain and the only domain that can directly impact and change culture. The third is to change culture, you need to change your own leadership behavior. There is no alternative. Do as I say, not as I do works as well in companies as it works with children i.e. not at all! Every interpersonal interaction for a leader is a two-edged sword. If you do it badly, your leadership behavior reinforces the culture you want to change. But if you do it well, it starts the formation of new interpretations consistent with the culture you want to see and that is gold! {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his Substack at rogerlmartin.substack.com.","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogerlmartin.substack.com","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Sites : [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] next »